Son of Laredo shooter dies

Updated 7:10 pm, Thursday, December 8, 2011

Naomi Salinas and her daughter Jannette drove across town to place flowers on the shrine for Rachelle, Timothy and Ramie Grimmer in front of the family’s RV in Laredo.

Naomi Salinas and her daughter Jannette drove across town to place flowers on the shrine for Rachelle, Timothy and Ramie Grimmer in front of the family’s RV in Laredo.

Photo: Jason Buch, San Antonio Express-News

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Neighbors created a shrine next to the RV where Rachelle Grimmer lived with two children. The RV has cracks in the wall that let in the elements.

Neighbors created a shrine next to the RV where Rachelle Grimmer lived with two children. The RV has cracks in the wall that let in the elements.

Photo: Jason Buch, San Antonio Express-News

Image 3 of 3

This undated handout photo provided by Jamie Rodriguez shows Timothy Grimmer. Timothy's father, Dale Grimmer, spent time with the hospitalized boy Thursday in San Antonio, Texas, one day after the boy's 12-year-old sister died. The two children were shot by their mother after being denied food stamps in Texas. (AP Photo/Courtesy of Jamie Rodriguez)

This undated handout photo provided by Jamie Rodriguez shows Timothy Grimmer. Timothy's father, Dale Grimmer, spent time with the hospitalized boy Thursday in San Antonio, Texas, one day after the boy's

LAREDO — The woman who shot her two children and then killed herself in a food stamp office here uttered words two weeks ago that seemed to have foretold her extreme actions and now sound chilling in retrospect.

Grimmer, who moved her family to Texas from Ohio more than a year ago, was a good tenant who showed no signs of being disturbed and was “very protective” of her children, Rodriguez said. She died at the scene of the shooting Monday.

Son Timothy Grimmer, 10, died Thursday evening at University Hospital in San Antonio after his father decided to withdraw life support, Laredo police said.

Daughter Ramie Grimmer, 12, died about 8 p.m. Wednesday.

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During a seven-hour standoff with a SWAT team, Grimmer was armed with a .38-caliber handgun and at least 50 rounds of ammunition, police said later. She at first held two state office workers and later a supervisor hostage before releasing them.

Ramie, before she was shot close to midnight, updated her Facebook page to read “may die2day.”

Grimmer, who homeschooled her children, subsisted on child support payments, Rodriguez said. She often relied on food supplied by neighbors and was distraught over being denied food stamps.

Her application was rejected last summer because she hadn't submitted all the required paperwork.

Their poverty stood out even in a poor part of Laredo.

“They came barefoot sometimes,” said Moises Nuñez, 10, adding that he played with the Grimmer children. “Their clothes were ripped.”

The Associated Press reported Wednesday that Mary Lee Shepherd, the children's paternal grandmother who lives in Helena, Mont., said her former daughter-in-law had a history of mental illness but declined to give details.

Shepherd said that after Rachelle and her son, Dale Grimmer, were divorced about six years ago, he tried to get social workers in Montana and Ohio to intervene out of concern for the children, to no avail. Shepherd and other relatives couldn't be reached for comment.

A spokeswoman with state Child Protective Services in San Antonio said Grimmer was twice investigated by the agency for possible neglect.

The first was in September 2010, when police reported that Grimmer was staying in a tent with her children on a beach near Kingsville. Investigators determined that Grimmer had food and money and that the children were homeschooled and adequately cared for. The case was closed.

Workers would have likely given Grimmer a list of housing resources if she said she was in need of such services, said CPS spokeswoman Mary Walker.

The second time occurred last June when Grimmer told police in Corpus Christi that she had been a victim of domestic violence. Again, investigators found no cause to remove the children from her care, Walker said.

As part of CPS protocols, staff would have checked with child welfare agencies in other states to see whether Grimmer had a history of investigations, she added.

Residents of the mobile home park said Grimmer spoke little Spanish in a neighborhood where few people speak English, but she was welcomed in the tight-knit community.

She rarely set foot outside her tiny RV, which had cracks in the walls exposing the family to the weather, they said. The RV had running water but no stove, and Grimmer cooked outside.

She tried to keep her children inside, but they would play with the neighborhood kids. Timothy would take them fishing at Casa Blanca Lake and Grimmer sometimes would ask for rides to the lake to catch fish the family could eat. Neighbors would share plates of barbecue during cookouts.

The trek to the Health and Human Services office that neighbors said they sometimes made barefoot after Grimmer's truck broke down would have been almost five miles.

Salo Otero, director of marketing for the South Texas Food Bank, said Grimmer never appealed to his agency or any of the 60 Laredo-area food pantries it supplies for help.

“We could have given her a 50-pound box of emergency food — beans, rice, frozen chickens,” he said. “This is a very sad thing. She must have felt desperate, isolated and so alone. She didn't have an uncle, a cousin, any family to help her.”

In Laredo, where about 30 percent of the 250,000 inhabitants live below the poverty line, some $40 million is given back to the federal government each year in unused food stamp benefits, Otero said. People don't know they're eligible, or they give up because the 18-page application process is too onerous, he said.

The food bank offers an outreach program that makes applying easier, but Grimmer never sought such help, h esaid.

Grimmer didn't contact the office to file a complaint about the rejection until Nov 16, said Stephanie Goodman. An agency supervisor called Grimmer on her cell phone five days before the shooting but no one answered and the voicemail box was full, Goodman said.

Rodriguez said Grimmer showed her a fax receipt two months ago indicating she had just sent bank account information to the food stamp office, reportedly the missing documentation.

“She told me they told her they never received it,” Rodriguez said. By then, Goodman said, her file already had been closed because of the incomplete paperwork.

Tuesday night, a candlelit rosary was held in the RV park for the Grimmers, Rodriquez said.

Grimmer apparently liked the area, said maintenance worker Eddy Lucio, 31. The Grimmers moved into the park in April but left after one month, moving to Corpus Christi. They came back in July.

“She said in Corpus the people didn't like her,” Lucio said.

A neighbor bought a tackle box for Timothy as a Christmas gift, Lucio said, but the shooting happened before he could deliver it.

Lucio said he was struck by how smart the Grimmer children were. Grimmer would help neighborhood children with thei rhomework.

Since Grimmer's death, neighbors have created a small shrine in front of her RV with candles and balloons. Neighborhood children left toys. Nora Lopez, 31, said she tied balloons to the shrine. Lopez said she rarely spoke to Grimmer because the woman didn't understand much Spanish, but said their children often played together.

“They're very pretty, the children,” she said.

Along with the sadness was a sense of frustration in Laredo that more hadn't been done to help Grimmer.

Naomi Salinas, 32, drove across town with her son, Luis, and her daughter, Jannette, to place flowers at the shrine. With tears in her eyes, Salinas said she'd never met Grimmer, but was moved by the story that's now so widely known she's talked about it with relatives in New York.

“I think that all she was looking for was a better life with her kids,” Salinas said. “The system was able to close the doors on her and make her feel there was no solution.”